CH. 12 Virtue Ethics: Aristotle

Question 1

Aristotle’s Moral Methodology

Answer 1

ARISTOTLE’S MORAL METHODOLOGY:

• ​Aristotle proposed that sometimes we should expect the answers that we do settle on to be tentative or imprecise.

BENTHAM – Thought he could show how all moral questions could be answered through the application of the theory of utilitarianism.

KANT** – Does provide a test, a systematic way to approach our moral problems, suggesting that any action has to match up to the **CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE.

• Aristotle proposes that while moral philosophy can help us to think about moral questions and can help to guide our actions, morality cannot be reduced to a formula, or a simple set of rules, or even a test against which to judge actions.
• Acting morally requires what the Greeks called PHRONESIS – or “practical wisdom,” requiring judgment and experience.
• Morality, in this view, does not have a user’s manual.

ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS – Taken as an account of how to lead a good life, which after all is what many people hope for in a work of moral philosophy.

• For instance, we are told that although a father can disown his son in exceptional circumstances, a son should never disown his father.
• Much of the moral philosophy we have looked at so far in this book tells us how we should think about morality.
• Popular books on moral topics, such as business or medical ethics, might tell us how to act.
• Aristotle is concerned with both thinking and acting: the theoretical and the practical.

​Aristotle is mostly concerned about what sorts of people we should be: what characters we should try to develop.

• character entails thought and action, but it also involves emotions and responsiveness to others.
• In this way Aristotle is presenting a much more holistic theory than many other philosophers did later.
• Aristotle, then, is interested in the broad question of “How should I live?” not just “What is the morally correct way for me to act?”
• In answering his question, we will need to think about caring for others as well as ourselves.
• Many people believe that morality often conflicts with self-interest; therefore, the principles of altruism and egoism often clash.
• Acting morally, in such a view, requires extensive self- denial.
• But for Aristotle, this idea of an intrinsic conflict between acting for yourself and acting for others is a mistake.
• Essentially, Aristotle’s ambition is to show how these two sides of life can be brought into harmony.

(And in this respect, there are connections between Aristotle’s thinking and the theory of ethical egoism.

• With the right training and upbringing, concern for yourself will also be concern for others, and vice versa. As we will see, this view means that moral education will be a central topic for Aristotle.

Question 2

The Good Life

Answer 2

THE GOOD LIFE:

NICOMACHEAN ETHICS:

• Aristotle begins by discussing what human beings want to achieve.
• His initial answer is: All agree that living the good life or doing well is the same as being happy.
• But what is it to be happy? Not, says Aristotle, a life of pleasure: “The mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring the life suitable to beasts.”
• Aristotle’s view seemingly was echoed by John Stuart Mill, who claimed that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
• This view contrasts with that of Bentham; he would have dismissed this claim as elitist prejudice, arguing that happiness is to be understood in terms of pleasure and that pleasures will vary in intensity and duration but not in quality.
• For Aristotle, happiness is a richer notion than pleasure.

The Greek term he uses, EUDAIMONIA – “human flourishing”, similar to the term thriving.

• The associated problem, “failing to thrive.”
• A flourishing, or thriving, individual is someone who is physically and mentally healthy, enjoying life, and accomplishing a number of goals.
• A good human life is, for Aristotle, a life of human flourishing.

What does human flourishing involve?:

• ​Not honor, says Aristotle, not virtue. Aristotle says, “Even [virtue] appears somewhat incomplete; for possession of virtue seems actually compatible with being asleep, or with lifelong inactivity”
• To answer the question of the nature of human flourishing, Aristotle suggests, we need to understand the “function” of a human being. And this makes some sense. A flourishing plant is one that does what we expect a plant to do—grow taller, greener, and (in some cases) to produce fruit or flowers. A flourishing human being, then, would be one who does what we expect a human being to do:
  • For just as for a flute player, a sculptor, or any artist, and in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the “well” is thought to reside in the function; so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.

Is it right to think that human beings have a function?

• ​In a religious worldview this question of whether man has a function may well make sense, for it is reasonable to ask why God has decided to create human beings.
• Aristotle does not relate this question to a theological concern. Rather he seems to feel it will help make sense of the question about what happiness means for human beings if we consider their function. And this is what he does:
  • Human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete. But we must add “in a complete life.”

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• Aristotle emphasizes the “activity of soul” exhibiting virtue; presumably, this is to get around his earlier observation that a person can be virtuous even when asleep.
• He gives a critical role to the “intellectual virtues,”
• Unlike the lower animals, Aristotle says, we humans are rational animals. He regards all animals as having a “LOCOMOTIVE SOUL” that allows them to move and a “NUTRITIVE SOUL” for growth and reproduction, but only human beings have a RATIONAL SOUL too.

ARISTOTLE’S CONCEPTION of HAPPINESS – To live a life in conformity with human excellence or virtue.

• For Aristotle this is not a life of self-sacrifice, for the life of active virtue is pleasant.
• The man who does not rejoice in noble actions is not even good: since no one would call a man just if he did not enjoy acting justly, nor any man liberal who did not enjoy liberal actions; and similarly in all other cases. If this is so, virtuous actions must be in themselves pleasant.

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• Kant’s view, in which the moral motive was strictly detached from the motive of pleasure. Even though Kant too thought that acting morally would often be associated with a feeling of pleasure, he would not agree with Aristotle that you could not be a good person unless you enjoyed acting morally.
• For Aristotle for the virtuous person, this is part of a broader pattern of life in which morality and self-interest can be brought into harmony over life as a whole.

Question 3

Acquiring Virtue

Answer 3

ACQUIRING VIRTUE:

Aristotle’s important concept of virtue:

• Aristotelian moral philosophy is a version of VIRTUE ETHICS.

​VIRTUE ETHICS – Essentially, a morally admirable person is someone who “possesses the virtues,” understood as a set of valuable, firmly held character traits.

• Acting morally is not simply a matter of doing the right things or following the rules, but being the right sort of person.
• A virtuous person is someone who deliberates and sees things in particular ways, and has the right sort of emotional response to situations.

PHRONESIS – A virtuous person also acts on his or her perceptions of what ought to be done.

How is virtue to be acquired?

• ​Aristotle’s teacher Plato set out the most obvious likely answers in his dialogue Meno. Meno, a wealthy visitor from the city of Thessaly, asks:

Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not teachable but the results of practice, or is it neither of these, but men possess it by nature or in some other way?

• Three alternatives are expressed here
  
  • One possibility is that it can be taught
  • Or it could be “a result of practice,”
  • It could be a natural instinct.

Question 4

Is Virtue Natural?

Answer 4

IS VIRTUE NATURAL?:

• Aristotle thinks it is clear that acting morally is not a natural instinct.
  
  • None of the moral virtues arises in us by nature, for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it to by throwing it up ten thousand times.
• His argument seems to be that if a trait is natural, then it cannot be changed in any way. But of course we can train people to develop or even change their moral virtues. Therefore moral virtue cannot be natural to us.

Question 5

Can Virtue Be Learned

Answer 5

CAN VIRTUE BE LEARNED – Aristotle suggests that knowledge of morality combines knowing “that” with a large dose of knowing “how” being a virtuous person is in many respects like being a skilled craftsperson.

• For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g., men become builders by building,

HABITATION – The importance of practice shows that becoming virtuous, is something that cannot be learned simply by reading a book or listening to your elders, although these will help. A person becomes virtuous by practicing being virtuous.

HABITATION – Understanding the general rules.

• Knowledge of the that of morality. This is like listening to the doctor and thus it is inadequate on its own.

That Because – Understanding why the requirements of morality are as they are.

• It is not enough just to know the rules; we also need to know the ultimate point of each rule.
• Aristotle clearly thinks that you will not achieve an understanding of the because of virtue without having practiced it.
• Only practice will give you knowledge HOW, allowing you to develop and fine-tune the right moral sensibility: and the more you practice, the better you will become.
• Equally important is that the morally virtuous person finds a source of enjoyment in “noble and just” action.
• If virtue is a sacrifice, then in Aristotle’s view it is not properly virtue.

Thus we have to be habituated into virtue – Combining four elements:

1. The that
2. The because (the why)
3. The practice (the how)
4. The enjoyment (the pleasure, perhaps).

• And all of this habituation, according to Aristotle, requires the right upbringing.
• The trick of a good upbringing is to link the two together, so that the mature person increasingly takes pleasure in acting well.
• To begin with, it will be a matter of learning the rules of morality.
• With experience, the virtuous person comes to see why the rules of morality exist.
• At this stage, he or she will have understood the because as well as the that, by knowing the point of the rules.

This means that the virtuous person will be able to judge when the rules are an oversimplification and it is right to do something that, strictly speaking, appears to be prohibited.

• ​Kant’s example of lying to a murderer is worth thinking about here. A virtuous person might reason that the point of truth-telling is to create a world of reliable expectations for mutual benefit. However, when someone proposes an action that so clearly goes against the public good, the normal reasons in favor of telling the truth are outweighed by other considerations.
• Slavishly following the rules may be better than never following them, but moral wisdom requires significant exercise of judgment, acquired through experience. question normally would be asked only by someone who is trying to acquire the virtue of courage and still needs to deliberate carefully. The truly courageous person, once habituated into virtue, simply sees what needs to be done; and he or she may well deny that the act was courageous when praised.
• Given that moral maturity is a developmental process that needs the right sort of upbringing,

ARISTOTLE’S THOUGHTS:

• With the wrong upbringing, you may struggle for the rest of your life.

Question 6

Virtue, Vice, And The Golden Mean

Answer 6

Virtue, Vice, And The Golden Mean:

What does Aristotle think we should do?

• ​Aristotle’s position is the:

GOLDEN MEAN – The right way to act is the mean (i.e., in the middle) between excess and deficiency, which are two forms of vice—the opposite of virtue.

• For Aristotle, the terms vice and vicious are broader and used as the opposite of virtue and virtuous.
• If courage is a virtue, cowardice is a vice. Oddly, a coward is a vicious person with negative character traits.
• Virtues can be destroyed by both excess and deficiency, and so we can (almost) always go wrong morally in either of two ways.

Examples:

• To be healthy you need to eat and drink; but eat and drink too much, and you will destroy your health as surely as malnutrition does, although in a different way. The idea is that healthy physical behavior entails finding a mean between overextending yourself and not doing enough.

VIRTUE – Is a mean between two extremes, which are both vices.

Question 7

The Virtues

Answer 7

THE VIRTUES:

What makes people happy and unhappy:

• ​The question, though, is whether such misfortune in appearance, children, or friends should affect your ability to act virtuously.
• Arguably, Aristotle’s discussion implies that it will be harder to act virtuously in these difficult circumstances.
• Such a position contrasts with the later Stoic view, mentioned earlier as influencing Christianity, in which virtue and happiness depend almost entirely on each person’s inner state.

STOICS – View what people own and how they look as having no bearing on whether they are good people. They say happiness can be achieved— even a higher grade of happiness— without external goods and regardless of how a person appears.

ARISTOTLE’S VIEW – His position is not that external goods, such as wealth and good looks, are morally good in themselves or essential to the good life. Rather he presumes that it will be easier to live a life of virtue if you have the right resources behind you.

• This view may be regarded as unfair, for it is a matter of pure luck whether we are born rich or poor, and those born poor will, on Aristotle’s view, struggle to live a morally good life.
• Avoiding the influence of luck in this way was a motivation of the Stoic view, which concentrated on inner states rather than outward success.

Question 8

Golden Mean

Answer 8

GOLDEN MEAN – We might think of virtue as literally a mean in the sense of an average between two extremes.

• Aristotle’s warning that we should not expect high standards of precision in moral philosophy.
• Aristotle himself points out that not all moral considerations can be represented as a mean
• Justice provides another exception: It is, itself, the limit, and an excess of justice is not possible.

Question 9

Virtue Theory and the Mean

Answer 9

VIRTUE THEORY and the MEAN:

Kant’s main idea is that we should read Aristotle as supposing that virtue is a type of compromise between two vices.

• ​You can get to “good management” by starting as a miser and gradually spending more and more; or you can start by spending too much and then gradually reducing your spending.
• But, Kant suggests, moral action is a matter of acting from the right law or principle rather than seeking a compromise between two vices.
• You need to start with a firm grasp of the moral law—in Kant’s case, the categorical imperative—if your action is to have moral worth. Hence, Kant says Aristotle’s doctrine is “false.”

How would Aristotle reply? – To begin with, Kant has not shown that Aristotle is wrong to locate the virtues as a mean between two vices, in the sense that there are (generally) two ways of failing.

• And Aristotle did not say that virtue is a compromise between two vices.
• The most interesting point is that you cannot act virtuously by starting at one of the vices and then either increasing or decreasing the intensity of your action until you find yourself at the virtue.
• Aristotle may well have replied that Kant has not completely understood his approach.
• The doctrine of the mean is not intended to be a decision procedure for a fully moral agent. There would be something odd about a person who said, “I want to manage my affairs well. I don’t know how to do that but I do know how to be a miser, so I will start off in a miserly fashion and increase my spending until I get to just the right amount.” Rather, the moral agent who has to exercise the virtue of good management is someone who has already received extensive training and habituation in the practice, and by now is experienced enough to know generally what to do without extensive reflection.
• Kant misreads Aristotle in thinking that the doctrine of the mean is a procedure for making moral decisions. It isn’t. It is an example of philosophical reflection on the nature of virtue and vice, although one that can inform how students of morality may be habituated to virtue.
• If Aristotle does have a theory of moral action, it is this: Act in the way a virtuous person would. Compare this idea to the way some Christians approach moral questions: “What would Jesus do?”

Question 10

Summary

Answer 10

SUMMARY:

PHRONESIS – “Meaning “practical wisdom”

EUDAIMONIA – Flourishing

Aristotle’s account of “HABITUATION” into morality. Distinction between knowing THAT and knowing HOW to explain his account of possession of the virtues.

EXTERNAL GOODS:

• Idea of virtue as a “mean” between two vices of excess and deficiency,

Kant’s critique of Aristotle, which appeared at least in part to be based on misunderstanding Aristotle’s view.